Monthly Archives: December 2013

If we want our lives to look differently we have to do more than cut down the weeds of negativity in our lives, we have to pull them up from the ground in which they thrive. We have to so engage with our thinking and patterns of doing things so that as soon as a negative or defeatist thought begins to emerge within us that we cancel that thought and replace it with one that is life affirming.

Our thoughts and beliefs have created our life to this point and they can change that pattern and create the life we would truly wish to live. The good news is a positive thought is ever so much more powerful than a negative one. (Think light overcoming the darkness) We can begin at this very moment to change those things we wish to experience.

Think of a thought or belief like a seed. That thought is planted in the soil of our minds and it soon begins to grow. Negative thoughts, like some seeds, produce in such a way that they can simply take over our entire lives. Soon, all we see is defeat and lives that don’t work, and we seem powerless to do anything about it.

The God of all perfect creation, however, awaits your acknowledgment of Spirit’s perfect presence right where you are. Around you, with you and as you. Affirming this presence of the Divine we can soon become much more aware of our everyday thinking. The words we use. Do our words uplift, or destroy? Do our thoughts bring peace, or unpleasantness? Do we see possibility, or do we insist on seeing lack, limitation and a well run dry?

Living our lives consciously, one positive, affirmative thought at a time, will soon clear out the thorns of discord and pull up the roots of those thoughts we know longer wish to dominate our thinking and our lives.

There is no time like the present to start. We can begin right now by praying: “Thank you God for new beginnings that begin with my very next thought. You God are in my thoughts and my thoughts are of you. You, God, are the very presence of positive, peaceful, affirmative energy and vibration. Today I choose to experience more peace, more love and more of all your Divine creation that makes my life more meaningful. I see with new eyes, think with a new mind, and experience with a new reality. Thank you, thank you, thank you God. And so it is, and so I let it be. Amen.”

May you truly have a wonderful New Year filled with all those things you wish to experience.

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

I love Christmas traditions. There are those that I grew up with in church, those that my family observed, and those I created for myself over the years. I also love the season of Advent, that wonderful time when we get to savor the traditions that mean so much to us and to wait with anticipation the coming of the day in which we celebrate the birth of the Christ child. Reading and re-reading the story of Jesus’ birth allows it to become so vivid and meaningful. There are so many different elements of the story to think about. Stopping to reflect on just one aspect of the story and pondering that in our hearts can make it come alive to us all the more. Stop and think about these:

the angels, their beautiful role in pointing the way to the place where the Christ is born,

the shepherds who stopped all they were doing and went out of their way to visit the manger,

the Wise men, traveling a long distance and being far from home but who stopped to worship and celebrate the savior of our world, or

Joseph and Mary who were told there was no place for them and were turned away until someone else came forward to show them compassion and love.

Our scriptures are rich with events that never get old because they forever grow in meaning as we reflect upon them.

Mary, indeed, had much to ponder about the events of those days. I’m sure she continued to reflect upon them throughout the following years and certainly as she watched her dear son crucified on a criminal’s cross.

Advent is a season of reflection and that reflection builds for us new and exciting traditions. This reflection helps keep alive the presence of the Christ in our lives today.

“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” — Luke 2: 19

Affirmation: “New traditions are born today in my life as the presence of the Christ becomes my most treasured present.”

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

Reading again the Christmas story is always a wonderful way to set the stage for us to receive the Christmas season. As I read again these wonderful words of scripture, and the story of this tiny baby in a stable, my thoughts can’t help but rush forward to our world today. It would be too easy to keep the Christmas story in one place and time. But the Christ is more than just a story of his birth.

Driving to the church today I looked up into the sky and was amazed at the beauty of the clouds and the sun shining through them. Surely the presence of the Christ is all around us, now and forever. The air is soft this morning and crisp with a cool breeze breaking through the warmth. Surely the presence of the Christ is right here in the movement of the wind, now and forever. I hear soft and sweet voices of children in our church school being raised in laughter and song. Surely the presence of the Christ dwells in each of these dear ones, now and forever. As we become aware of our breathing in and our breathing out surely the presence of the Christ moves and has it’s being within the very core of us, now and forever.

The Christ that was in the beginning is with us today. We must keep Him alive in our hearts and minds by our conscious awareness of His presence. Look no further than your own thoughts, for there you will find the Christ, you will find His love, His grace, His blessing and His answer to your every need. Not just at this Christmas time, but now and forever.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

(Hebrews 13:8)

Affirmation: I walk with Jesus, today and forever.

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

What no human mind could have ever imagined was imagined and visualized in the mind of God. What God created on that first Christmas not only changed the lives of thousands upon thousands centuries ago, but continues to change lives today. The blessing given on that first Christmas morning continues today, for the presence of the Christ forever is with us. Comfort, joy and peace, deliverance and grace await us whenever we call upon him.

Advent, the time of anticipation and preparation, gives way to Christmas. That which was imagined, is now reality.

Jesus was born, Christ lives. Our gift to ourselves is our acceptance of the most magnificent gift ever offered. It remains for us to unwrap the gift with our faith, our trust and our belief.

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

(Isaiah 9:6)

Affirmation: “Thank you God for the most wonderful gift I could ever receive. The gift of the Christ.”

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

“An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you’.” (Matthew 2: 13)

Suppose we picked up our Bible for the first time and read the above scripture and nothing else. Our view of what happened to the young Jesus would be very limited. This is true of reading any single passage of scripture, and only that, and thinking that is the whole story. We must read on to discover God’s message for us. Yes, Jesus and his family fled to Egypt, but they returned. Yes, Jesus was a baby, a young man and later an adult, but there is more and we read on and discover he had a life-altering ministry. Yes, he died on the cross, but we read on and discover the resurrection. Just as we must read the entire biblical story to seek understanding, so too we must look at our entire lives to know that we are not just a single event of our past. Maybe we experienced tough times, brokenness and hurt, but there can always be so much more beyond that. The story of our life can change at any moment as we affirm the presence and grace of our loving God. We celebrate at this time of the year the birth of the one who showed us how life can change when we believe and trust in him. So, as you write the story of your life remember to include the Christ, the Son of the living God, who is indeed the author of all life.

Affirmation: “Together with the Christ we author my life and it is good.”

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

Back when I was in seminary one of my classmates said something in a Lectio Divina small group at a retreat that really struck a cord with me. Lectio is a wonderful exercise in reading a short passage of scripture aloud several times while you meditate on its meaning to see what word, or thoughts, speak to you. It was after a time of meditation and reading of scripture that we each began to share our thoughts. We were on a mountain hillside with a view of the Pacific Ocean and there was a wonderful sense of calm and the Christ presence in that place. We were each being very conscious of our breath as we allowed our breathing to move us into a greater awareness of Spirit. What my classmate said that really touched me was about the breath of God and our oneness with Divine Spirit. She said that when we inhale God exhales, and conversely, when we exhale God inhales. The image of this is powerful because it reminds us that God is in our breathing, in that which sustains and continues to give us life. God is the oxygen that feeds and nourishes us, it is that which naturally and effortlessly renews us. God is flowing in a beautiful rhythm with us providing what we need at that moment, and every moment, while moving with us to self-awareness of an ever-greater expression of the Divine Presence. Breath symbolizes life. Our life, God’s life, within, around and as us. As we become ever more conscious of our oneness with God our spiritual dialogue with one another moves from being a surface conversation between strangers, to an intimate dialogue between friends.

I like to use the mantra, “Here I am” as a guide. Breathe in with “here”, breathe out with “I am”, and know that God is doing the same.

“In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.” (Job 12:10)

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

The Rev. Dr. Carolyn Ann Knight has written “God never sends us where God has not been. God never sends us without first preparing the way.”

Where is it we want to be? Where is it we would like to go? Can we get there? What’s stopping us? We are all filled from time to time with these questions. Questions that can stop us right in our tracks and prevent us from ever moving forward.

God has given us an idea, a seed planted in our minds and hearts. A Divine Idea in the mind of God already fully realized and given to us as a divine idea. God can make that idea seed blossom into something beautiful.

Are we traveling unchartered territory? Maybe for us it is because we haven’t yet traveled down that road and gazed upon its scenery. But God has been there and God has prepared the way, so our road is not really unchartered. It has been prepared, cleared, cultivated, paved, landscaped and marked with scenic points well posted for our journey. It is an incredible and fascinating road, but unless we connect with the master architect we are likely to miss the turnoff. Our internal GPS (God’s Prayer System) is up and running and available any time we decide to follow its directions. The journey awaits our decision to hop on board. God gives us the idea, the road map, and everything we need along the way toward that place we desire to be.

Can you get there? Yes. What’s stopping you? You decide. God has you all packed and ready to go.

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made.”

(“How Great Thy Art”, lyric)

Affirmation: “God has prepared my way and tilled the soil. As I move forward I now plant seeds of faith and watch the blossoming miracles.”

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

I have often heard it said, “I was praying for some time when I suddenly had the awareness that at long last God heard me.” Did God at last open an ear to hear? Did we finally wear God down until God had no choice but to listen to our pleas?

Perhaps a better revelation for us should be that in our prayers and meditations suddenly we heard God. Suddenly the wall between us had been broken down and the current of God energy and awareness was able to break through. It’s not that we have had to wait in a long line for God to get around to offering us God’s grace and blessing, but that we were finally coming to God with the openness to see what has already been there. Our fears and our anxiety that we would be heard have at long last melted away, and as they have we have opened that glorious space for Spirit to come in.

We sing a beautiful hymn of the church, “Open My Eyes, That I May See.” In this hymn we are really opening our conscious awareness to that which has always been before us. We are believing first so that indeed we may see, not waiting until we see before we can believe. For a lifetime we have had it backwards. We have often thought, or said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Better we should affirm, “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

“I was praying and at long last I got out of my way so that the joy and perfection of a God who knows only good could be revealed to me.” Now we’re talking!!

“The only thing that counts is faith working through love.” (Galatians 5: 6b)

Affirmation: “Today I open myself to a new awareness of Spirit right where I am. The joy and perfection of God is revealed to me.”

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

We live our lives one thought at a time. Let each of those thoughts really count for something wonderful.

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life. Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall at First Christian Church, North Hollywood, CA for our Contemporary Celebration and Praise service. Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship. Those things in life that you have been seeking have also been seeking you. Now is a good time to receive them.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.

Imagine that you have a bucket of dirty water and you wish to make it clear again. You begin to drain the dirty water out as you pour clear, clean, fresh water into your bucket. This is a gradual process and depending on the pace of your endeavor and the amount of water you drain and replace it can take some time. But eventually you find that now your bucket is filled with clean and perfect water. This too is true of our thinking. Our thoughts about many things may have been on the negative. Lack, limitation, poor health, feelings of not being loved or understood, whatever has been weighing you down with destructive thought needs to be eliminated before we can move in a more positive direction. We need to purge our thinking of the desire and need to always move toward the negative, and begin to make affirmations for the things that we truly desire. Slowly, one is eliminated so that another new and better thought can take its place. I like to think of this as exfoliating our thinking. Just like we exfoliate our skin to remove dead skin cells, so too we must make an effort to remove dead destructive thinking. Like our bucket of water it may take some time. As we move to this new place of affirming the presence of God it will begin to show up as new energy and vibration in our daily life. God desires that we live in harmony with all that is life. Life created by God, lived through God and lived with God. One of the simplest ways we begin to affirm our life with God can begin with simply saying “thank you.” There is no time like the present to begin to exfoliate.

“But now you must get rid of all such things- anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language from your mouth.” (Colossians 3: 8)

Affirmation: “Letting go of all that no longer serves me I open up the perfect space to recognize God’s many wonders in my life.”

Rev. Jefferson Beeker

Be prepared to change your thinking and change your life.

Please join us each Sunday at 5:30 PM in our Social Hall for our Contemporary worship and Praise service, “Acts of God.” Come as you are and enjoy an hour of great music from our wonderful band and singers, inspiring messages and good fellowship.

Also, join me on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8 PM for an hour of guided and silent meditation, reflection, affirmation and prayer. As always, we will share communion together. Everyone is welcome.